I Wasn’t Fat; I Just Hated Myself

Because of something I had said the other night, my friend asked if I had ever thought I was fat. I answered, “No,” but then I remembered that I did think I was fat when I was eighteen years old, recently out of high school, with a badly broken heart.

Shortly after graduation, my boyfriend of two years had suddenly left me. I felt like I was standing alone out in a desert, winds of self-hatred, sadness, and failure pelting me till I curled up into a protective ball of numbness.

I weighed myself to see if I still existed, and I noticed the scale read 108 pounds. Always being thin enough that people felt a need to comment, 108 sounded like too much, so I began to live on a small handful of cereal, a couple of hard-boiled eggs, and a few saltines each day. When I saw 103 pounds on the dial of my parents' old scale, I began to feel a little more in control of my life.

What I didn't tell my friend the other night was that after losing those five pounds, things only got worse. Back then, a couple of girlfriends and I met a man while hanging out at Cheesman Park down in Denver. He was inviting people to a meeting where participants talked about God. Having little going on, and being the spiritual seeker I was, I bit the bait and started attending Wednesday night meetings, even driving the hour and a half it took to get there from the town I lived in while going to college.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was finding my way into a cult.

I ended up dropping out of school in order to be with the group full-time, and shortly after that a small number of us were sent to another state. There, I had at least a dozen companions who were doing the same meditations and following the same long list of rules as I was. We were a sick family, stressed by ridiculous exercises to make us more disciplined, while the leader used us to make himself rich.

I started eating too much. The needle jumped to 133.

One day the cult leader ordered several women to lose specific amounts of weight, while letting me know I should just "lose a few pounds." We were living under penalty of being cast out, of having to go back to living with "world people" who would suffer the anguish of the Last Days, and I didn't even know whether the loss of two pounds or ten would save me from all of that! 

I tried an all-protein diet for ten days. I ate too much. I fasted. I ate cartons of ice cream. 108. 130. 110. 125.

I medicated with food, eating a whole box of Triscuits or a package of cookies in one sitting. After throwing away the empty box, I would buy a milkshake and drink it dry. This was my dessert ritual after eating a big dinner.

My pain came from much more than my big, bloated belly, but I only had the means to relieve the physical symptoms. I failed at self-induced throwing up, but I was a master at purging through the over-use of enemas and laxatives. After each cleanse, I would feel a lightness, like I was walking out of a sort of prison and into the huge sky of freedom. I would swear that I never wanted to be a prisoner of my bingeing again, and I would vow to stop over-eating.

The last time must have come two years after joining the cult, right before I popped a couple of bleeding ulcers that put me in the hospital.

In the hospital, I couldn't binge and purge. I couldn't do the required meditations or follow the rules of the cult. That was all fine. More than fine. When I left the hospital, I also left the cult. Two bleeding ulcers and a few hospital stays began the healing I still work with today.

The other night, if I had thought about it a little longer, I would have told my friend that, honestly, I never thought I was fat. But the dark thoughts of self-hatred and some horrendous fear of trying to live in this world used to warp my view of food and life. 

Self-hatred and fear continue to be shadows over my left shoulder, but at the same time, right in front of me, I see the sun rise, I feel air filling my lungs, and I know love is so much bigger and truer than the thoughts that try to undermine the beauty of this world.


Carol Barrow
October, 2018

waiting

how 
does
one
wait
?

michael's
cancer
status
is
“watch
and
wait”

ethan 
and
emily
wait
to
find 
out

but
how 
does
one
wait 
?

i
can’t
see
your
waiting

can 
one
wait
in
her
sleep
?

no
it’s 
a
job
we 
take
on
by 
day

except
when
we 
forget

what
a 
relief
the 
moments
i 
forget
to
wait

and
i 
wait
without
waiting.


Carol Barrow
September, 2018

Now That I’m Sixty-four

I am sixty-four years old. I don’t have that many years left. Some would say, “You could have another thirty!” That doesn’t feel true to me. Or desirable.

I am sixty-four years old. I have to be honest. As sweet as life is — and it is sweet beyond words — I can’t believe that this beautiful, finite, hard and violent, loving and kind world is something to be held tightly.

I am sixty-four years old. I hold onto this life tightly.

But sometimes, I don’t.

The play of light and shadow seems to grab my attention quite often. And I forget to look to find what it is that is shining the light and casting the shadow.

But sometimes, I don’t forget.

And none of that matters, I guess.

Can I say it?

Dare I?

I don’t find living until ninety-four to be desirable because it’s too hard to live this life believing in the lights and shadows. Too tiring to believe I am someone who needs to be happy, liked, loved, warm, cool, young, smart, beautiful, loving, giving, perfect.

I have to laugh.

Stop believing such things, and then life won’t be so hard!

I am sixty-four years old. I don’t have that many years left. Some would say, “You could have another thirty!”

In the moments I am free of the need for an identification, none of that matters.

Can I say it?

Dare I?

It’s not that anything matters, or that it doesn’t.

There is another option: To be free of the need for anything to matter, and to love all the mattering.

I am sixty-four years old. I don’t have that many years left.




Carol Barrow
September, 2018

I Won't Always Be Here

Stephen Jenkinson asks, “Until your ability to see the flower is rooted in the fact that it won’t always be there, and neither will you, how much of the flower do you see?”

I hadn't gotten around to posting this photo of dinner the other night, a dinner where all but the almonds came straight from our garden to the stove to the table:

I remember thinking about how common and boring pictures of food can be. Maybe that's why I never made the effort to post the photo of dinner or the photo of just a few of the green beans I picked last weekend.

We had great vegetable gardens this year. Our soil was happy, and our plants were healthy. Until...

 Swiss Chard

...yesterday afternoon, a scary, windy, rainy, haily storm came through and pretty much annihilated the vegetable gardens, and stripped many trees of their foliage. Now, eighteen hours later, hail and strewn leaves still cover our yard.

Kale

If it hadn't been a hailstorm, it would have been frost or something. All things must end. Or continue on in another form. Or...

Every summer, I carry with me the fact that the plants in our garden are impermanent, that they will wear out by autumn, but I don't entertain the possibility that they could all be gone in some unsuspected moment, long before the first frost. I live that way in other areas of my life, too, thinking that everyone I love, including me, will naturally die in old age; there is always lots of time before I need to look at an ending. I put off living with the fact of impermanence until autumn approaches, until someone is in her 90s, until...

I won't always be here. I won't always be here. I won't always be here. This culture does not prepare us for, does not educate us in, that truth. Nature is offering it up to us all the time. I am trying to remember to listen.

What Really Matters III

when i try to find the answer
to the question
what really matters?
i 
get 
stressed

i 
run around
in circles
looking 
for something
i can't find.

maybe this is it!
but what if it isn't?
that over there
seems to matter more 
than this
but 
everyone says
THIS matters most

i get dizzy
fall down
look up
at the huge
              blue
                  sky
                     above 
                             me
grass tickles my skin

i fall again
in love
with this fresh nowness
and 
forget the question


Carol Barrow
August, 2018

What Really Matters II

The summer before I started second grade, we moved into a new home. Somehow, between our old house and the new one, my favorite stuffed, yellow kitty got lost. I loved that kitty. To me, she was as real and alive as anyone. She mattered, and I spent many, many nights looking up into the darkness and searching for an answer as to where she could be. I had failed as her caretaker, and I felt as though a piece of my heart had been yanked from my chest.

We moved again, to Colorado, when I was a young teen. Moving from a small, conservative town to a large city, I felt like I had just awakened from a long and boring dream. There was so much that mattered! I became aware of war protests, and suddenly the Vietnam War mattered. So did my new friends, bell-bottoms, make-up, and long hair. Boys mattered; especially the one who asked me to dance. Sometimes God mattered, and so did the huge pimple that showed up the morning before a date.

Now, fifty years later, I  still remember many of the things that once seemed important. Who I think I am is made up of those memories and many others; they have stuck to my True Self like frosting on a cake. So sweet.

I notice that my ideas of what matters come and go, many lasting a few minutes; some, several decades. But a ribbon of mattering has been woven throughout my life. It is made of air, food, water, sun, beauty, kindness, friendship, and love. These things have mattered throughout, even when I turned my attention to other matters.

But what happens when I die? Does mattering need a “someone” for it to matter to? Are there some things that REALLY matter, no matter what? I don’t know how to know. I don’t know if the Earth needs us, or if it matters to the sun that the planets encircle it. I don’t know if the universe cares what goes on within it or around it. Still, I have a sense that all of this does somehow matter. Like the dancer depends on floor and gravity, space and relationship, all that we are aware of depends on everything else. In the dance, all parts matter, and maybe that is true of the universe, of everything. Acknowledging this, it makes sense to me to be with each moment, each dance partner, each stuffed, yellow kitty as though they all matter, but to do so lightly, with the freedom to accept what comes next in these ever-changing appearances of life. 

Do all of these words matter? They did while I typed them. Now, I'm not sure. And that feels so right.